Joker's MST3K Reviews

[Joker]

Warrior of the Lost World

I'm a big fan of horror/cult films, so seeing Donald Pleasance and Fred Williamson is always fun. Pleasance has a halting way of speaking in his acting and so does Williamson. I tend to do a good impression of his "Swamp Thing" way of talking. "He must be...rescued."

This is one of a select few episodes where there's a lot of action. I always thought that the rolling car battle was cool. Now if they had more than just the one car explosion it would have been perfect. The oil barrels suddenly appearing must have been a fuel dump for the Omegas since their symbol was draped across the front of them. You'd think they would have seen it...

Megaweapon would have been cooler if he/it had some sort of mounted machine gun on him/it. As it stands it seems to not really do anything like Joel points out. Unfortunately, Megaweapon just looks like a dump truck with a bunch of junk in the back. I know that's what he/it is, but there could have been more there. At least he/it ran over that bike...

One thing cut out of the film was an encounter with some mutants in the cave with the styrofoam squeaking spiders. I remember that from when it was on TNT one night years ago.

This is also the movie that shows that long kisses are not necessarily romantic or erotic at all. The Paper Chase Guy and Persis make out for what feels like an eternity.

I watch this on YouTube a lot. If it was on DVD that would be awesome!

5 stars out of 5!

[Joker]

The Final Sacrifice

Tobey McGuire-looking Troy and a slobby alcoholic guy named Zap Rowsdower seek a secret city while eluding a deadly cult of killers ruled by the Darth Vader-wannabe Satoris.

After some thought about it I realized that this film seems to be a metaphor for being gay. A cult of violent zealots want total domination of the world (which could be the church) and put their hourglass mark brand on Rowsdower, which leaves him tormented (like a closeted gay man in Christianity). Only by being rid of this shackle will he truly be free, but now he's a hopeless drunk.

There's also one woman in the movie who's a motherly aunt. Another woman is on the radio and one more is just in a picture. So it's a real male dominated film with no hints of romance really.

Rowsdower seems to be a "half-blood," some kind of superpowered guy. At one point he does manage to push his pickup truck out of the mud. Imagine what this guy could do if he was stone cold sober! So this makes him the only other Canadian superhero other than Wolverine (the only other well-known one anyway).

The old prospector-looking guy shocked me since he's much older than me, but in much better shape! "I gotta go work out."

Not as action packed as it could be, but I understand that it's not going to be a Jason Bourne film.

4 out of 5

[Joker]

Devil Fish

Somewhere in Florida something is eating people just off the coast. An electrician (Michael Sopkiw) winds up having his work sabotaged by outside forces while enjoying his heavily-sexed life. The police are baffled as to what to do while a mad scientist is responsible for the tentacled shark.

A lot of Italian B-movies are like this. As American films and even our B-movies continued to innovate with technology and special effects, they unfortunately were lagging. This movie is pretty typical of your average low-budget Italian monster film.

But this movie is notable for another reason. The director of this film is actually Lamberto Bava using the pseudonym John Old, Jr. He's actually done much better horror with Demons and Demons 2.

He's also the son of legendary Italian horror director Mario Bava (Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, Baron Blood) and who actually directed Danger: Diabolik. So it's the only time in MST3K history that a father and son contributed to the MST3K bad movie lexicon.

I knew all of my viewing of Italian horror films would come in handy one day...